This photo of the parking lot of Stuart's Drive-In on North Main was taken by Paul Hester in 1970.

This photo of the parking lot of Stuart's Drive-In on North Main was taken by Paul Hester in 1970.

Photo: Paul Hester / 1970 Paul Hester

Image 6 of 6

This photo of the Stuart's Drive-In on North Main was taken by Paul Hester in 1970.

This photo of the Stuart's Drive-In on North Main was taken by Paul Hester in 1970.

Photo: Paul Hester / 1970 Paul Hester

The thrill of the parking lot: Prime Property Past

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As president of Houston Tomorrow, David Crossley champions quality of life issues such as walkable urbanism and mass transit.

But when growing up in Houston he was a different cat. In this Prime Property Past essay, Crossley recalls the 1950s, when all roads led to Stuart’s Drive-In. He and his teenage friends and rivals gathered at the hamburger joint’s parking lot, near South Main and Old Spanish Trail:

Coming down South Main in the early evening we’d all start to organize the way we were sitting in the car, working for coolness as we pulled off the street and into the huge parking lot of Stuart’s Drive-In Restaurant, the primary node of teenage action in Houston in the 1950s.

Rows of cars with mostly teen-age boys watched us come in, slouched down in our seats with a couple of fingers on the little triangular window that used to be on doors of cars back then. Why everybody wanted to look like they were really short is kind of a mystery from this far perspective.

We cruised up and down all the rows in first gear, moving slow, glancing around to see who was there, good guys and bad.

Older kids had their own areas and when we were younger we had ours in a different part of the parking area. When we found our crew, we’d ease in beside somebody we knew, gave little waves, and let the engine run for a minute, especially when we were in the ferocious Pontiac V-8 that sounded like a marine engine.

There was always a girl in the car, sometimes, two. If not, pretty quickly girls would change cars if they had come alone, and things would tighten up in the seats.

At first, all we’d order was Cokes, because we had some business to do before ordering fries and burgers. The business was racing. And we knew the Pontiac was The Beast and would win.

Eventually, a challenge was issued, and two cars slowly eased out of the lot and headed down almost rural deserted South Main, usually going out a mile or so to check for cops and then back nearly to Stuart’s where we turned around and headed south again. Then we lined up next to each other and glared.

The race was called a drag race, who knew why, for one quarter of a mile, and it began with high-pitched noise and burning of tire rubber, and when the tires finally gained traction the cars leaped forward.

You had to be really good at shifting into second gear and maybe third gear, or you’d lose time with all the clutching. People who were particulaly good at it skipped the clutch part altogether and just slammed the transmission into second.

After the explosive quarter mile, we’d turn around and come back up to Stuart’s slowly, one car full of winners, the other with the losers.

Then it was time for fries, at least, and if there was enough money, burgers and malts.

Stuart’s was always a party in a line, rows of cars full of people, all whooping and hollering at each other, extending our social networks until midnight or so, and then cruising back to our homes, entirely fulfilled and juiced with victory (or defeat).